One of the biggest flaws of the skill is that it becomes redundant as time passes; it cancels its usefulness through its success.

Perhaps it should have a secondary function, besides possibly learning new spells. I already made a different suggestion for the skill before a while back, but another one just popped in my mind.

Change Eagle Eye in that it can read whatever spells are contained on a Magic Shrine, in a Town or another Hero, within a certain radius around the Hero in question. Maximum radius is determined by the Eagle Eye skill. While controlling such a Hero, the player can right-click said object and get details of the spell(s) contained within. In the case of Heroes, the Hero with Eagle Eye gets a peek in the other Hero's spellbook as if it were his own; in the case of Towns, the Hero gets a peek at the contents of the Mage Guild within that Town (can use the Mage Guild interface for this). The maximum spell level displayed depends on the Eagle Eye skill level.

While viewing can be done at any time, the first time the Hero views any spell held in such an object, there's a chance to learn spells from said object just like the skill works now. Keep in mind that skill Tier applies for which spells are visible; suppose a Hero with advanced Eagle Eye watches an enemy Town and sees a Tier 5 Mage Guild, only spells up to Tier 3 are revealed; the others are hidden. The Hero only has a chance to learn up to Tier 3 spells from the Guild. If at a later time the Hero increases his skill to Expert, he can return to the enemy Town and peek inside again. This time, Tier 4 will be revealed as well, along with the chance to learn its spells, but since Tier 3 and below were already seen before, the chance to learn those that way is now zero. Similar applies to enemy Heroes: spells already seen before have zero chance to be learned; new spells do have a one-time chance to be learned when seen during a later inspection.

That way, Eagle Eye can still remain useful lategame when you want to see what enemy Heroes have in their spellbook.
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The last Reasonable Steward of Good Game Design and a Responsible Hero of HC. - Verriker

What if Eagle Eye had an interaction with the spell research mechanic — when you are researching a spell, you're presented with 2 options; ending the research: you pay the price for the spell, keeping the slot locked with the researched spell, and continuing the research: another spell is going to be researched. So, maybe Eagle Eye could also give the hero a chance to learn the spell that was just skipped (when you choose to continue the research, of course). It fits thematically: the keen observer could capture the essential glimpse of the spell, event though it was not formally researched. This idea came to me in a dream, believe it or not.

If luck and morale would scale like in the original game, it would probably look something like this:

+4 luck/morale - 16,6%
+5 luck/morale - 20,8%
+6 luck morale - 25%

This would mean that taking Leadership/Luck would benefit the player even they had some luck or morale related artifacts/spells/buildings etc.

I'd like this suggestion for luck and leadership to improve the stacks up to maybe 10 (10 would be ~25%). So you may accumulate moral and luck.

In case of Leadership and Luck my suggestion would be: +2 Moral stacks for every rank in "Leadership", +2 Luck stacks for every rank in "Luck". +6 in total 15% chance for a boost. When you combine it with artifacts you may be able to stack up to 10 that means 25,0% chance for moral or luck boost.

Furthermore an addition to luck: the critical hit rate rises for every stack up to additional 50% for 10 points in luck (5% each point). Example: 7 points of luck means 235% more damage with a chance of 17,5% to get lucky strike.

a new artifact: Sarcophagus of Death: Misc Artefact working like a mobile skeleton transformer

As for Dispel: It is nice as it is, it also counters beneficial spells so thats okay...

I think both suggestions of Gandalf196 and Maurice are good. Except that there are skills supposed to excel contextually. For example, Intelligence for low-int heroes, Path-finding for maps with many rough terrain areas, or Scouting for large maps.
I am fine with skills with limited usage, but they must be good enough. For now both Eagle Eye and Learning skills offer worst than zero - not only they bring nothing to the table, but also take away the ability to select other more desirable skills.
Actually, I kind of thinking about a major redesign of how the skill learning work. For example, think about the progression system of Skyrim - you learn skills by doing, not by selecting. But that's for another thread.

I'd like this suggestion for luck and leadership to improve the stacks up to maybe 10 (10 would be ~25%). So you may accumulate moral and luck.

In case of Leadership and Luck my suggestion would be: +2 Moral stacks for every rank in "Leadership", +2 Luck stacks for every rank in "Luck". +6 in total 15% chance for a boost. When you combine it with artifacts you may be able to stack up to 10 that means 25,0% chance for moral or luck boost.

Furthermore an addition to luck: the critical hit rate rises for every stack up to additional 50% for 10 points in luck (5% each point). Example: 7 points of luck means 235% more damage with a chance of 17,5% to get lucky strike.

For Luck and Leadership, those ideas would indeed buff them. However, as the game has plenty of ways to get morale and luck, your proposition would possible nerf them in total.

If the max stack amount would suddenly rise to 10 instead of the normal 3, and 6 stacks would give 15% and 10 stacks 25% as you said, I would assume that having just one or two stacks of luck/morale would give less % that we are used to. That would be a huge nerf to all map objects, town buildings and luck/morale related artifacts etc.

When it comes to speaking of Eagle Eye, I still personally feel that it just doesn't work as a skill and should be replaced with something else. That would be far less hassle than trying to implement ways of making it something that it never was.

Let the EE speacialist have their Eagle Eyes and make it impossible to obtain Basic Eagle Eye by just leveling your hero. (Adv. and Exp. levels would still be obtainable, if you - for some reason - wanted to learn EE from Witch hut, for example.) Replace the Eagle Eye related artifacts, they would not be missed. Eagle Eye itself would be replaced with another magic-related secondary skill.

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Learning however is another problem skill. Having 15% of more experience simply is nothing. I'm not sure if Learning was a "last second" addition, or did the game testers not just realize how little value the skill actually gives you.

As Learning isn't mechanically broken - just raise the % high enough - and you could have the most OP secondary skill in the game.
But that begs the question: how much should the number be increased to make Learning good? You can see the experience needed for each level here.

If Expert Learning would give double experience for example, that would sound really good for a second, until you realise that AT BEST it would only make a hero with Expert Learning around 3-4 levels higher than a hero without Learning. And even that is increadiably optimistic way of looking this case, because no hero starts with Expert Learning.

Even with triple Experience ratio, (hero would be around 5-6 levels higher) it's not clear if the skill would be clearly consired good. (well, maybe on Tazar and Crag)
You see, levels and experience in this game do around 3 things in this game. Each level up gives you a "random" primary skill, a secondary skill point, and affects on most heroes own speciality.

It's more than likely that your hero would not be as high level than it could be. You would not get Expert Learning right away, and would you really rush for that as you could skip other good secondary skills along the way? Then when it comes to fighting, yes, your hero would have more primary skills, but some of the extra secondary skills would be in Learning, which would do nothing itself in combat.

Then there is Kinkeria, who would overflow in experience, so it could be a good idea to consider changing a bit his speciality. He could remain as a Learning speacilist thou.

Perhaps Learning could be changed to some Mentor ability. A Hero with Learning could teach other Heroes he meets for up to 5%, 10% or 15% (depending on Skill level) of his own experience. Has no effect when the other Hero already has more experience than the level he would be raised to. Perhaps also make it incur a monetary thingy: to train other Heroes, the player needs Gold to spend on this; this makes it a bit like Gelu and Dracon, who can upgrade units, except in this case, it upgrades other Heroes.
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The last Reasonable Steward of Good Game Design and a Responsible Hero of HC. - Verriker

Hourglass said:
For Luck and Leadership, those ideas would indeed buff them. However, as the game has plenty of ways to get morale and luck, your proposition would possible nerf them in total.

If the max stack amount would suddenly rise to 10 instead of the normal 3, and 6 stacks would give 15% and 10 stacks 25% as you said, I would assume that having just one or two stacks of luck/morale would give less % that we are used to. That would be a huge nerf to all map objects, town buildings and luck/morale related artifacts etc.

That's true it would nerf map objects and I'm okay with that since the mainskill should be the primary pool for moral/luck. It is also possible to add more luck/moral to map objects, it's just a number. So in that case it would be +2 or +3 for some objects.

Experience needs a cap at a certain point when the algorithm has to stop. Let's say the amount of experience is needed is capped at level 20, every further level needs the same amount of experience. It first has to be checked with the magic update anyway. Since level is the biggest variable for spelldamage.

I think 8 player is a hardcoded max. cap same as additional colors or player numbers. The HotA team would need the original files to edit it properly. It would take some years of disassemblig to get to the point where you may add some more factions, exceed player limits.

• Sarcophagus of Death - work like a mobile skeleton transformer (Misc)

• Leaderhip & Luck
* New mechanic: stack up to 10 stacks of Moral/Luck with 2,5% per point
* Basic: gain +2 points of Moral/Luck
* Advanced: gain +4 points of Moral/Luck
* Expert: gain +6 points of Moral/Luck
* Additional: every point in Luck also add additional 5% to the damage
* Example: Melodia with Expert Luck that has visited a "Faerie Ring" before battle get 7 points of luck, 235% more damage with a chance of 17,5% to get lucky strike.

sulik said:1st proposal: This proposal can keep both concepts: when an eagle eye hero defeats an enemy, he/she can learn 20%/40%/60% spells in that fallen hero's spellbook.
2nd proposal: This proposal keeps the first concept making the eagle eye heroes learn spells of other by simply being nearby the enemy heroes/town for an extended amount of times (3 days?). To make it more restrictive (and inherently more rewarding), an eagle eye spell can be made, which is similar to the dig command: requires a full day movement, and will consume all of them. In return, the heroes can learn up to 3 spells in the spellbook/spell scrolls of the nearby enemy heroes. Furthermore, the enemy will receive a notification (which can be similar to the 7-day no-town notice), and can cancel the eagle eye set-up by simply making the eagle-eye hero moves.

In both proposals, spells learned ignores the requirements of wisdom.

1st is not bad. i suggested a better version some pages behind, so that the skill triggers when engaging in combat. works like Scholar just with opponent stuff

Wisdom would still be needed

2nd is too much hassle

Maurice said:Change Eagle Eye in that it can read whatever spells are contained on a Magic Shrine, in a Town or another Hero, within a certain radius around the Hero in question. Maximum radius is determined by the Eagle Eye skill. While controlling such a Hero, the player can right-click said object and get details of the spell(s) contained within.

this i like the most. Eagle Eye working like a Rogue/Visions skill on anything that is magic based (+ maybe on University, Mercenary Camp, Tree of Knowledge, creature banks, treasuries). viewing radius instead of levels and percentages

Maurice said:Perhaps Learning could be changed to some Mentor ability. A Hero with Learning could teach other Heroes he meets for up to 5%, 10% or 15% (depending on Skill level) of his own experience. Has no effect when the other Hero already has more experience than the level he would be raised to. Perhaps also make it incur a monetary thingy: to train other Heroes, the player needs Gold to spend on this; this makes it a bit like Gelu and Dracon, who can upgrade units, except in this case, it upgrades other Heroes.

That would indeed need to be a monetary thing, as it seems that a lvl 21 hero would turn level 1 hero to level 10, assuming that the Mentor would have Expert Learning. Hero with level 30 could make up to level 20 heroes. Sounds pretty crazy if you ask me

Got another idea for improving the interface:
- DELETE key -> disbands the selected stack (possibly without asking for confirmation - or insert a menu option to allow/disallow confirmations). Basically saves a few clicks, especially at the start.

@sulik: in my opinion it won't be powerful enough to make Eagle Eye usable. Your first proposal is not good enough because on maps like Jebus Cross the match is usually over when a hero wins an important fight. So why would anyone care that they learn some spells afterwards? With very few exceptions the scouts used in the game will not have spell books to prevent the enemy learning spells from your magic guild, or simply not build it above level 1/2. This means Eagle Eye becomes useless with no downside for the opponent (i.e. he can play around it very easily).

The second proposal, although interesting, won't be used because it involves spending movement (the main resource of the game). Why not go for an artifact that makes you more powerful instead? Or setting up a chain, or anything else that helps you win the game more.

Secondly, they said they already know what to do with each skill to make it viable. My suggestions were just different lines of thinking or additions to whatever they have planned.

I like synergies between most elements of a game and I think HOMM3 lacks them most of the time. Going in the direction of keeping the game boring/imbalanced/etc just for the sake of being in line with "tradition" is wrong, in my opinion, because it implies giving up a huge amount of potential. I have lots of ideas regarding most stuff in the game (been playing it for over 15 years), but I know it's almost impossible to change people's minds, so I won't bother. For example, Wake of Gods has some really nice things, but it's not 100% ok because it strayed away too much in certain aspects. It's more like a fun mod than anything, but with a lot of good things to consider and evolve upon.

Crusader2010 said:Got another idea for improving the interface:
- DELETE key -> disbands the selected stack (possibly without asking for confirmation - or insert a menu option to allow/disallow confirmations). Basically saves a few clicks, especially at the start.

The idea is to make the city act as an inventory of artifacts and war machines without the presence of a hero. This would offer three benefits:

First, heroes can pick up artifacts and war machines without the need of a transport hero. Sometimes it might take less movement for one hero to deposit an artifact into a city and go off on his way, setting it up for another hero who would pick up the artifact several days later.

Second, I feel the Legion artifacts are a bit fiddly to work with, especially on larger maps. If the artifact was made to work from the city inventory without the need of a hero, you can just deposit it, forget about it and focus on other things.

Third, if you play on impossible, choose artifact as your starting bonus or you get it on random, you can just leave it in the city for the second hero to pick it up if you feel that hero should have it. No need for meet-ups later if they start exploring in separate directions.

The icon left of the castle icon (where you can buy out all troops) is not clickable. This is where the storage can be located. There could even be a number in a corner of this icon denoting the number of artifacts or war machines currently deposited in the city.

The idea is to make the city act as an inventory of artifacts and war machines without the presence of a hero. This would offer three benefits:

First, heroes can pick up artifacts and war machines without the need of a transport hero. Sometimes it might take less movement for one hero to deposit an artifact into a city and go off on his way, setting it up for another hero who would pick up the artifact several days later.

Second, I feel the Legion artifacts are a bit fiddly to work with, especially on larger maps. If the artifact was made to work from the city inventory without the need of a hero, you can just deposit it, forget about it and focus on other things.

Third, if you play on impossible, choose artifact as your starting bonus or you get it on random, you can just leave it in the city for the second hero to pick it up if you feel that hero should have it. No need for meet-ups later if they start exploring in separate directions.

The icon left of the castle icon (where you can buy out all troops) is not clickable. This is where the storage can be located. There could even be a number in a corner of this icon denoting the number of artifacts or war machines currently deposited in the city.

+ this. Also i remember back then suggesting having the option to dismiss war machines and artifacts at any time, hope this will be touched too.

I have a suggestion for the suggestions: there are so many (potentially) quality features that might make heroes 3 can be even better, but it seems rather difficult to track these suggestions n terms of ideas, justification, and the responses of the modder (if any). Therefore, I suggest us to have a sub-forum dedicated to suggestions & discussions, as well as a meta thread used to summarize the idea, justification, and modder's responses (if any). This forum can be helpful even to other heroes versions, not only the third one (or even the Hota mod).
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lostpw said:Make either eagle eye or scouting be able to predict what reward is in a pandoras box, and or in utopias, and creature banks

this would make those skills a little bit better

maybe even crypts ect. and i guess it would make more sense with eagle eye, and within scouting radius, so scouting would be a buff to the effect.

this would make those skills better on scouts than on mains though...

Sounds most like a scouting thing to me, and Scouting is a fine skill for, well, scouts, so there really isn't a need of buffing the skill anymore.

Overall, the effect would remain pretty small, as you can already check the rough amount and type of creatures inside the bank. For example, you can tell the exact amount of gold inside the Crypt when you enter the building but haven't confirmed if you will attack or not. This is not case with all creature banks; some give you full information but in other cases, just knowing what can be inside the banks, you can predict if the battle will be easy/medium/hard, and thus know something about the types and amounts of resources and artifacts before entering the battle.

In case of Pandorax boxes, there isn't really a good way to know, but in the case of RMG maps, just looking what's guarding the box and if there are other treasures with it, you can predict some things about the valuables inside.

The curious thing about this is that Learning, for instance, would still be a subpar skill, which serves to further illustrate the idea behind this aproach — some skills are so useless that they seem more like complements to skills than skills themselves (think about the magic schools, they dramatically increase the effectiveness of the corresponding spells & reduce their cost. If the former is already that powerful, why include the latter?).

Link: http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=45286&PID=1468775#focus
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All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

Combining feels wrong for my taste... buff them seprately and everything is fine. Furthermore most fo these skills perform normally (intelligence) while others underperform (mysticism, learning) these could be easilie fixed with some numbers.